International

Exclusive: Russia to OPEC - deeper oil cuts won't work. #Reuters

23:05, Thursday, 12 March, 2020

This week’s oil price rout had become inevitable and cutting output has ceased to make sense because it is unclear how deep the impact of the coronavirus on demand will be, Russia’s deputy energy minister said in an interview with Reuters on Wednesday.

Last week, Saudi Arabia failed to secure Moscow’s support for deeper output cuts at a meeting of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies, known as OPEC+. Following the disagreement, Saudi Arabia has threatened to flood the market with oil. Oil prices LCOc1 dropped by as much as a third on Monday and fell again on Wednesday to around $36 a barrel. OPEC had proposed to deepen cuts by 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd) and Russia was asked to cut an extra 300,000 bpd.Pavel Sorokin, Russia’s deputy energy minister, described that task, which would have doubled Moscow’s commitment to 600,000 bpd, as technically challenging.